I just haven't met you yet

The key to happiness

I’ve found the key to my personal happiness today, I tried projecting myself in every possible situation (including many worse-case scenarios) and as long as I have the following, I will be happy :

• A close relationship with God, in prayer and reading His Word.
• Daniel,  my husband, lover, best friend and my “person”
• Family : Daniel is family, my parents, my siblings, some very special friends, a dog, a cat, or of course a child or children. But I just need to have family to be happy.
• Books and words and thoughts and ideas
• Art, poetry, music – whatever inspires me at a certain time
• Feeling feminine
• Goals and dreams
• Seasons, places and especially a place to call home, memories
• Tea, strawberries and cream, lasagna

No matter what, I will not die alone and bitter. No matter what happens, I will always have someone to call family, even if in the end that’s “only” a dog.

If any of these things is missing or harmed, I will need to grieve and it will probably make me miserable. Right now I am grieving the loss of two family members, although  I never actually met them or got to know them. One of my dreams was dashed to pieces and I’m wondering if I should continue dreaming that dream or give up on it. I won’t give up just yet but I’m worried it might just stay a dream, never more.

But I have other goals and dreams too which are coming true very soon, I just bought a pretty dress and I have a good book to read while curling up with some tea, I enjoyed a wonderful kiss on a pedestrian bridge onlooking the Saone river and the hills today. I read my Bible this morning on the Bellecour Plaza and I talked to 3 close friends this week. I’ve shared their hopes, their dreams.

I’ve been enjoying the sunshine in the morning followed by thunderstorms in the evening. I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately.

I am happy.

And if I hold on to these things, I always will be despite the heartache.

“If you can see the wonder of a fairy tale, you can face the future, even if you fail” – Abba.

Lost in translation

Acronyms again… OPKs are Ovulation Prediction Kits – right? right?

Apparantly not in French. In French, OPK means Ovaires Poly-Kystiques. Also known as PCOS.

It’s now confirmed, there is no way I can use French forums even though I live in France.

Plus, they really don’t seem to have any answers at all to the questions other members have.

The forums I’ve been lurking in don’t seem warm and supportive like JM ! :wub: you ladies

PCOS

Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome.

That’s one word I will use an acronym for on a regular basis.

And it’s also what I was just diagnosed with this week.

I’m lucky in that I ovulate on my own, irregularly, but I do ovulate.

My LH levels are higher than my FSH (about double) which was what my doctor considered a strong indication, along with my odd cycles. Then she examined my ovaries via ultrasound and confirmed the diagnosis.

What does this mean for me?

I can conceive, and indeed I have, at least twice (that I know of).

But PCOS causes miscarriages. The miscarriage rate with PCOS is 45-65% vs. 15-25% for a normal pregnancy. Knowing this makes me so scared for the future.

Stork season

One would think it’s stork hunting season

That’s a thought that just randomly popped up today.

17 vials of blood and my kindle-money later, I’ll know in about a week if there’s some obvious problem causing my storks to get shot down.

And meeting a specialist doctor in a month.

So moving forward, finally getting back into a sort of normal life routine, discovering my new “normal” because I’ll never get the old normal back.

I’m not going to experience pregnancy the way I would have with my first or even my second, I don’t even think my parenting will be the same (although the impact won’t be so obvious).

You can have it all, but how much do you want it?

This is really the main question to ask about when trying to conceive.

How far is too far? How many tests am I willing to undergo, how many procedures, how many drugs? For how many cycles? Years? How many tears? How much money?

How far am I willing to stretch my definition of family and what makes one?

How much pain, how many losses?

I’m realizing that I will stop at nothing to become a parent. I want that very much, perhaps it’s one of the things I want most out of life.

I’m also realizing that I don’t want it enough to risk more losses. I am willing to give it one more try. One more pregnancy.

Adoption is a very long, emotional and difficult path. So are fertility treatments and recurrent miscarriage. I want to be a parent enough to go down one path. And I’m at a crossroads of sorts. I know that once I reach the end of one path, I will probably not have the strength to turn back and go down the other. I’m talking about myself here. I can’t go down the biological child path much longer and retain strength & courage for adoption in case that doesn’t work out.

So I’m choosing the adoption path. I will take one more step towards biology : one miscarriage, or one (more) year of trying to conceive. Then I will stop, turn back, take my time to grieve and lick my wounds. Then we will embark on another journey, the one that will make us parents. And we will stop at nothing on that path.

That is how I feel NOW. I know this can change, but this is how I feel and I hope future me will see the sense in these words and listen to my advice.

I know it sounds like I don’t believe we will get and stay pregnant and become parents that way. Perhaps I don’t. Why even bother then? Because I believe it just enough to try once more.

Stroller count

I was starting to wonder if the baby boom was all in my head or if I was really surrounded by strollers and babies.

So I counted. I was out of the house and in town for a grand total of 3 hours this afternoon (including 30 minutes at my old college to pick up some paperwork, 30 minutes in the beauty salon where I didn’t see any at all, and 30 minutes on the bus) and I saw…. 46 strollers & pregnant women. (I only counted one, the others might have just been fat or have recently given birth or had some other medical issue)

46. Sigh.  I guess I’m really NOT crazy and perhaps infertility really *isn’t* that widespread.

And now for something completely different…

At least I wish.

I wish I could move on and think of something else for any length of time.

But even the books I read, not selected for that reason, tend to contain storylines involving pregnancy, miscarriage, loss, pain, infertility and I just want to think of something else, talk of something else.

I don’t want to be completely consumed by this. But I am.

It’s perhaps a bit odd that I would post this on a blog so obviously (not to mention recently) created for the sole purpose of posting long-winded writings on this very topic.

Naming after a loss

This is extremely personal and it’s hard for me to talk about it.

Our losses were very early (both at just under 5 weeks/before or on 18DPO) so there was no way to know the gender. No way to know anything at all about the babies.

We didn’t name our first loss.

We weren’t planning on naming the second. It just happened that way though since we had very strongly associated a boy name to that pregnancy and agreed we could never name a living child with that name because it would bring back memories of that pregnancy. So by agreeing on that we essentially named that 2d baby.

So, out of fairness, I selected a name for the first. I’m not even going to post the names here. Hardly anybody will know them. If you really want to know they are in my journal on the forum, once.

This is something we have done for ourselves and nobody else, as a way of aiding our grieving.

I understand if you don’t understand. It was very early after all. But it worked out that way and I feel like it has helped me at least a little.

Maybe after all…

Maybe I am too paranoid. My husband went to church (I did not) today, Mother’s Day, and nothing was said at all. A few years ago I remember there was a big deal made over it so I suppose I was right to protect myself, but still. Now I feel slightly bad.

But my emotions are still so raw that there is nothing wrong with protecting them, even if that makes me a little too paranoid at times.

Mother’s Day

Mother’s day is tomorrow (in France, where I live).

I’m very frustrated by it.

I feel like it’s a purely commercial holiday that is there mainly to make people buy stuff and/or feel bad. A bit like Valentine’s Day.

Those who attach the most meaning to Valentine’s Day are single people who just want to find “The One”.

Those who attach the most meaning to Mother’s Day are women who have lost their mother, or infertile women, or women who have lost a child.

How is this necessary?

Mothers are celebrated (or should be) by their children, as their mother, on her birthday. But yet everyone has a birthday. Having birthday wishes from your child is still special enough to be a real treat. Being forgotten by your child on your birthday is painful enough without the additional day where you are forgotten, if  you don’t have the best relationship.

In the same way, Valentine’s day is unnecessary. Every couple has a date – the day they met, or the first time they kissed, or made love, or said “I love you” or got married, or got engaged, or some other very personal and unique milestone. Why add on another? It almost feels like it’s there out of cruelty to remind those who have not of what they are missing, without even bringing much to those who have.

I declare Mother’s Day national “Going to Church is a bad idea” day.